Complicit Space: Architecture, Coloniality and the Engineering of Belonging

Abstract

The colonised encounter is never an innocent event. It is always a trauma, a form of violence,
a permanent shock that leaves traces (Fanon, 1963).
As the primary constructors of spatial development, coloniality and apartheid have actively
embedded their ideologies throughout the South African postcolonial landscape. Architecture
and spatial planning were instruments of state apparatuses, embodying their ideals and
intentions in their physical built form.
Existing scholarship on apartheid and postcolonial spatial theory has extensively examined
urban segregation, township planning, and domestic housing as separate fields of inquiry.
However, these spatial categories are rarely analysed as interdependent components of a
unified system of governance.
This paper contributes to architectural and urban scholarship by developing a multi-scalar
reading of architecture as a continuous system of governance, examining how spatial planning
extends beyond functional requirements to shape identity, memory, and social hierarchies,
thereby reframing architecture as an active system of socio-spatial governance.